5 Whys and root cause of healing chronic diseases

“By asking and answering ‘why’ five times, we can get to the real cause of the problem, which is often hidden behind more obvious symptoms.” Taiichi Ohno of Toyota Motors.

A disease is a response of our body to our lifestyle. Whether its stress, or unhealthy eating or irregular living. Irregular living means not paying attention to body’s rhythm and splurging recklessly on the body. Irregular time of eating, irregular time of waking up and sleeping, sedentary lifestyle, paying no attention to the quality and nutrition value of the food we eat.

Many of the ongoing diet and lifestyle interventions in low-and-middle-income countries are relatively recent, and few have documented reductions in the rates of major chronic diseases. However, the successes of Finland, Singapore, and many other high-income countries in reducing rates of Coronary artery disease, stroke, and smoking-related cancers strongly suggest that similar benefits will emerge in the developing countries.(1)

What this means is the treatment of reserving any lifestyle disease is a lifestyle change and not only medicate. Allopathic medicines treat symptoms of the disease. How many doctors (General Practitioners) you have visited you think has given you quality time to discuss your disease? They just ask you the problem and prescribe the medicines. Period. Most medicines work so we don’t bother also to know the root cause of the disease. We also now know the medicines can address the disease so we don’t bother to know about the root cause.

We wake up only when there are some serious and chronic issues.

The world is increasingly threatened by a global epidemic of chronic diseases. Almost half of the global morbidity and almost two-thirds of global mortality is due to these diseases-approximately 35 million die each year from chronic diseases. And they continue to increase. Increasing evidence suggests that these diseases are associated with lifestyle, stress, lack of physical exercise, over-consumption of calorie-condensed foods rich in saturated fat, sugar, and starch, but also under-consumption of antioxidant-rich fruits and vegetables. As a result, the function of the innate immune system is severe impaired.(2)

Holistic medicine is the art and science of healing that addresses the whole person – body, mind, and spirit. The practice of holistic medicine integrates conventional and alternative therapies to prevent and treat disease, and most importantly, to promote optimal health.

As the agenda of this blog defines happiness, it is attained through a good and healthy lifestyle with content living. The ideal healing process and practice should be healing the person and not the disease.

Characterises of holistic healing:

The root causes analysis:

As the Six Sigma system prescribed asking Why 5 times to reach the root cause of any problems, we also need to understand 5 whys of any health related issues to reach the root cause of the disease.

Problem Statement: Mrs. X is suffering from Stomachache.

Apply 5 Whys:

Why: Acidity

Why: Eats late lunch at 3 pm

Why: Not feeling hungry at lunchtime

Why: Drinks many cups of tea by lunchtime

Why: Thinks Tea is good for alert mind

Tea is good for alert mind is the root cause of her stomachache. Unless she addressee this and stops drinking more tea, nothing will offer enduring solution. Treating acidity will not be an enduring solution and stomachache will become chronic unless she reduces her tea consumption.

Knowing the root cause will make us think of possible enduring solutions to treat the disease.

Unless we address the root cause we are just treating the symptoms. Identification of the root cause and treating the root cause is what holistic healing is all about.

Regular lifestyle means right time eating, right quality of eating, right time and adequate sleeping, regular exercise and Yoga, stress less, and content lifestyle. If any of these characteristics are missing we become prone to disease. For a holistic healing, we need to balance the imbalance here. Medicines are temporary solutions.

“Disobey God and you are forgiven. Disobey Nature and you get a disease.” Nancy S. Mure